States of Conflict: An Update

Our latest quarterly chart has, for the first time, data on three of the four countries along what might be called the "axis of anxiety" stretching from Iraq to Iran to Afghanistan to Pakistan.

First, a word on Iraq. It may surprise many Americans that more United States troops remain there than in the rest of the Pentagon’s Central Command zone combined. But despite several worrisome developments this year, including the twin car bombings in Baghdad on Aug. 19 that killed well over 100 people, violence has not worsened this year on balance. The country remains between peace and war, closer to the former if still very troubled.

In Afghanistan, the top American commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has delivered sober assessments of the deteriorating security environment there and asked for more troops. Indeed, the Taliban and other armed groups are now active in at least 140 of Afghanistan’s 368 districts, whereas they had been present in at most a couple of dozen a few years ago. While deaths among NATO and Afghan forces have increased, civilian fatalities, fortunately, have not – at least relative to 2008.

Pakistan is probably doing better than Afghanistan this year. Pakistani forces last spring drove out a majority of Pakistani Taliban from the Swat Valley. Combined American and Pakistani intelligence efforts led to the fatal strike in August against Pakistan’s top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud. But to use the lexicon of American counterinsurgents, while there has been some clearing and some holding, there has been little yet in the way of building up viable state structures in the North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and the tribal areas.

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